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AIXpert Blog is about the AIX operating system from IBM running on POWER based machines called Power Systems and software related to it like PowerVM for virtualisation, PowerVC for Deploying VM's and PowerSC for security plus performance monitoring and nmon

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Update: The developers and the manuals call this Load Sharing but most people think it is called Load Balancing. Perhaps, balancing gives the wrong impression of fine grain packet by packet balancing where we actually have higher level, cruder splitting of the work with Sharing. Below I use the word Balancing but mean Sharing. I have got a few questions recently on how to set this up as there are announcement with near zero information on setup, the configuration needed and a worked example. So here goes. For a long time now we have had SEA... [More]

The new VIOS Shared Storage Pools 3 (SSP3) arrived a month ago and I have all my VIOS updated now to VIOS 2.2.2.1 plus fixes. This brings with it the regular VIOS improvements but also new features for SSP3 including: Better pool use stats for example see the below lssp command and the Used percentage and Unused(mb) columns and the over view output too has new data $ lssp -clustername stars -sp atlantic -bd Lu Name Size(mb) ProvisionType %Used Unused(mb) Lu Udid orange7a 32768 THIN 9% 29615 7d58538152 …... [More]

Questions I have a number of customers asking me these types question:
Are there are good practices on how to size disks for the storage pools. If I want a 5 TB pool, how many disks which size, does it matter ? Also are there any document limits regarding, pool disk, LUN and so on. Answers Not sure about best practice but there is common sense - will that do? Restrictions are included with the VIOS announcement "Read Me" notes, which you can find here for the current VIOS 2.2.1.3... [More]

Shared Storage Pools - just got even more interesting ! SSP Clusters with disks pools and super fast disk allocation VIOS Shared Storage Pools (phase 3) allows 16 VIOS on different machines to operate as a VIOS cluster with a set of SAN LUNs in the pool - think in terms of a number of TBs of disk space in the pool. The VIOS systems administrator can then allocate disk space to a new or existing Virtual Machine (LPAR) in around a second which can be thin or thick provisioning regardless of the underlying disks. This drastically reduces the... [More]

It has bee a long few weeks traveling to Dublin, Las Vegas, Slovenia, Germany and Sweden to give lots of presentations. Six Weeks and five countries and the expenses are piling up on my desk. I was presenting a core set of topics like POWER7+ announcement summary, VIOS Shared Storage Pools (SSP3), Workload Partitions (WPAR) and Versioned WPARs to run AIX 5.2 and AIX 5.3, quick introduction to PowerSC (security tools), a Techie "what you need to know about" Systems Director for AIX, and Quick Dips in to Active Memory Deduplication... [More]

I am using the VIOS Shared Storage Pools more these days and it reduces my system admin time and I really like the Thin Provisioning feature as I have limited SAN disks. Any way, I dusted off an machine that I did my initial investigation on and decided to rebuilt the cluster (of one VIOS) now that I know what I am doing :-) The command : cluster -create -clustername galaxy -repopvs hdisk2 -spname atlantic -sppvs hdisk3 hdisk4 hdisk5 -hostname diamondvios1 fails with "PV IS IN USE hdisk4". PV meaning Physical Volume. Yes,... [More]

At last I have got round to rebuilding my Shared Storage Pool cluster of machines. We have the four VIOS limit. So I was thinking: For machines with Dual Virtual I/O Servers - the options are limited so I would pair up machines for mutual Live Partition Mobility. For machines with single VIOSs - I would create a cluster of four machines for some extra flexibility and LPM across any of the machines. The "cluster -create" command to make the first node of the cluster too about 3 minutes and the "cluster -addnode" command... [More]

Finally, I found the time to try this new exciting feature and it was really simple to create and operate. I captured movie footage of my first attempt and it all worked (once I removed my spelling mistakes in commands). It only took two commands. So the technology has advanced concepts but it really easy to use, COOL! Some of the commands come with long option names like "-custername". A quick misquote from Star-Trek, never goes wrong: "It is UNIX Jim, but not as we know it!" One command to create my cluster,... [More]